GREAT BRITAIN: I Loathe Dictators

The most-talked-of political clique in 1938 was the "Cliveden Set," the name applied to a group of eminent Britons who frequented Cliveden, Buckinghamshire estate of Lord & Lady Astor. Occasional visitors to Cliveden are Prime Minister & Mrs. Neville Chamberlain; Montagu Norman, Governor of the Bank of England; Geoffrey Dawson,' editor of the potent London Times, which is owned by Lady Astor's brother-in-law. Major John Jacob Astor; and Colonel & Mrs. Charles Augustus Lindbergh.

To certain Clivedenites Lindbergh reputedly delivered his reputedly damaging remarks on the Russian Air Force which reputedly scared the British Government out of sticking up for Czechoslovakia. The "Cliveden Set" became a synonym for a sort of Fifth Column working on behalf of Germany behind the back of the British Government. Last week the Hostess of Cliveden did her best to convince a Manhattan sob sister that this conception was all wrong.

Sought out by Dorothy Dunbar Bromley, onetime writer of women's chatter for the New York World-Telegram and now a columnist for the New York Post, Lady Astor proceeded to whip out a flat denunciation of Adolf Hitler. "I'm so much against him [Hitler]," cried the spectacular Virginia lady who 'has sat in the House of Commons since 1919, "that I wouldn't think of accepting an invitation to meet him if one were offered me. I loathe dictators and all they stand for. The most horrible thing Hitler has done is to warp the lives of Jewish children. Isn't it awful we can't tell what this lunatic is going to do next?"